A guy at the office was called by BBC radio today, asked about our horrible weather here in the Midwest. (Defined perhaps as the area between Hoboken and Oakland, California.) I think he missed an excellent opportunity to prank the fellow: it's 70 below! The roads have disappeared beneath sixteen feet of snow; kids are being winched out of holes in the roofs of school buses, and the backhoes are going 24/7 to open up sufficient graves for the dead. Why, the frozen dead are stacked like cordwood! And the cordwood is stocked like dead people, too, if you're lucky enough to have enough cordwood to heat your house. It's the worst winter ever.

Seriously, is it? Not ever; I suspect the ones that had wooly mammoths roaming about, goring cavemen for appetizers, were worse. But they're saying this is the worst winter in 25, 30 years - and while I'm not inclined to endorse these things, it could be so. We always think this one's worse because IT'S FLIPPIN' COLD OUT and we have forgotten the finger-tingly joys of the previous January. Snow? Bigger storms come to mind. But when you combine the cold, the wind, the ice, the snow, the general gloom in the zeitgeist, and the grim knowledge that the winter has three months of full-strength hell to go, well: yes. It could be the worst. Until the next.